


In Dreams Begin Responsibility

by Kass



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Dreams, First Time, M/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-17
Updated: 2008-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:46:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kass/pseuds/Kass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If this is my dream, Charles thought, I can kiss him."</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Dreams Begin Responsibility

**Author's Note:**

> A long time ago I tried to write a Charles/Erik story that wasn't depressing. Whether or not I succeeded was debatable, so it languished on my hard drive for a while. Yahtzee looked at it at one point, and I think Justine did too. Anyway, it's here now as a kind of holiday gift to Tzikeh, who wanted Charles/Erik. Enjoy!

Erik's presence should have surprised him more than it did. On some level, Charles supposed he was always half-waiting to see him: behind every door, around every corner. That damnable helmet meant Erik's approach could be disguised, if he chose; no familiar susurration of thought would emanate past it.

Though Erik wasn't wearing the helmet now. He leaned against the wall, legs crossed at the ankle, hands in his pockets. It was a hot night and he was dressed in loose bone-colored linen that made his hair seem whiter. Charles wondered anew how they had come to be so old.

"What are you doing here?" That his voice showed only mild curiosity gave Charles an irrational surge of pride.

"What do you think I'm doing? Checking on you." Erik untangled his limbs and walked over to stand before him, eyes appraising.

Charles felt the familiar flush rising in his cheeks. He had never been able to adequately conceal the surge of desire which Erik's gaze was capable of rousing in him.

The room around them was featureless. Awareness washed over Charles like the unguarded thoughts of a multitude: this was a dream.

The disappointment was irrational, but powerful. Apparently some part of him really wanted...what? For Erik to come and apologise, after all this time?

"I don't need supervision."

"No?" There was the barest quirk of a smile in Erik's tone. Amusement.

If this is my dream, I could kiss him, Charles thought.

If this is my dream, I can make him go away.

Even in his sleep, discretion proved the better part of valor.

* * *

The next visitation came two nights later.

"Chess?"

Charles was seated at an old wooden table with a chessboard inlaid. The gloss on the wood was scratched, presumably from decades of play. The chess set was unfamiliar to him: not one he had ever owned or played on. The pieces were angular, almost cubist.

Erik sat opposite in a heavy leather club chair. Grey flannel trousers, a spotless white shirt with round collar, eyes bright as ever.

"Is my subconscious mind so boring that all we can do is play chess even when I'm dreaming?"

"I thought you enjoyed our battles." Slyly.

"Never as much as you did." The response was immediate, and more honest than he might have chosen in waking. It gained him a sharp look.

"What would you have preferred?"

"There have been deaths, Erik."

Thankfully, his dream-Erik seemed to have no desire to pretend incomprehension. "Pawns must be sacrificed. Even you know that."

Charles looked down at his hands, spread across the afghan his mind had supplied to drape over his legs. Even in dreams he didn't want to look down if he didn't have to.

"Lately I'm not so interested in winning anymore."

If the admission came as a surprise, Erik did not show it. He did not reply.

* * *

Everyone has dreams in which they search labyrinthine halls for something they cannot find. Psychology teaches this, and telepathy had confirmed it.

In Charles' new version of this old dream, he was looking for someone. It was important that he not consider who he was looking for, or why; he knew that to do so would break the spell, make his goal unattainable.

Dream-logic rarely bears close scrutiny.

When he solved the puzzle, chose the right door, avoided the obvious traps strewn along the floor, he found Erik, in what looked like an enormous hotel suite. Sitting at a desk, writing.

Erik pushed his chair back and rose when Charles entered the room, an oddly charming Old World behavior that surely no one practiced any longer. "You mean to keep visiting, I see."

"I? It's you that's been visiting. I don't even know why I'm here."

Erik half-smiled. "Don't you?"

Charles glided over to the fireplace and parked himself before the flames. No gas-fed monstrosities here: this was a real wood fire, or at least as real as dream-fire could be. He wondered, idly, whether he could transform the room (fireplace, windows, carpeting) without losing the thread of the dream.

Without losing Erik.

"I don't sleep in the helmet." Erik spoke matter-of-factly, as though he were answering a question Charles was sure he had not asked.

"I'd think it would be frightfully uncomfortable."

"In bed, yes."

Charles was suddenly aware that behind him, in the part of the room he hadn't scanned on entry, was a bed. A large bed. Sheets perhaps still mussed from Erik's body.

Charles wheeled back a few feet. He was flushed. The fire was burning too hot.

This was ridiculous. Was he not in control here?

"Are you all right?"

Erik sounded solicitous, but he was untrustworthy. It would not do to forget that.

Besides, he wasn't real.

Charles took a deep breath and wondered how long it would take to make himself wake up.

* * *

In the next few dreams, they discussed philosophy, even reminisced a little, steering carefully clear of potential danger zones. This Erik couldn't come up with any arguments or memories Charles hadn't anticipated, but he could almost convince himself it was their lifetime of acquaintance that made their conversations so familiar. The time together was pleasant, unthreatening.

But tonight Erik's predictable appearance on the couch irked him. Could he dream of no one and nothing else?

Erik's voice was low but mesmerizing. "I find I think, often, of when last we met." Although he did not elucidate, Charles knew he meant their last waking encounter, beneath the lake, under circumstances neither of them apparently wanted to mention.

"If you're looking for forgiveness, you're not going to find it here."

"I believe you're confusing us again." Archly.

"Go to hell." Charles turned his chair and began gliding down the long hallway. Almost instantaneously his motion had ceased and Erik was kneeling in front of him.

"The Talmud, tractate Yoma, holds the following teaching about forgiveness."

"Since when are you a Talmudic scholar?"

Since when, Charles wondered, am I? Since surely all of this stems from my mind...

Erik continued as though he had not interrupted. "The transgressions of man toward God are forgiven him by the Day of Atonement; the transgressions against other people are not forgiven him by the Day of Atonement if he has not first appeased the other person."

"You believe in God now?"

"You do," Erik corrected gently. "And you're the one who feels incapable of being forgiven."

Unbidden, the scene surrounded him again: Stryker's bastardized Cerebro, his own mind pinpointing everyone on earth and preparing to snuff each light, easy as pinching out a birthday candle.

Charles became aware that his eyes were pressed shut. That despite his supposed self-control, tears were seeping through.

"Believing yourself beyond salvation is itself a sin. God cannot forgive you until you forgive yourself."

"You don't know what it was like—"

"I orchestrated it." Sharply. "It was my doing. If anyone is to be blamed for that suffering, it is I."

When he opened his eyes, Erik was still on his knees, looking at him intently.

When he opened them again, it was morning.

* * *

"The war is coming."

"You're so certain of that."

"Of course I am. I intend to start it."

Charles shook his head, frustrated again. "Damn it, Erik, I don't want to fight you!" The losses would be tremendous, on both sides, and for what?

"You needn't. Just stay out of my way." Sharp.

"I can't. You know that."

Erik steepled his fingers in his lap and stared at them as though they contained answers. When he looked up again, his features were grave.

"I survived the first Shoah. I do not intend to give them the chance to enact another."

"They won't. They wouldn't."

"You're so certain of that." Quietly Erik threw his words back in his face.

Charles took a deep breath. "I have to be."

"I don't have that luxury. I know what humans are capable of."

"As do I, and the range includes great goodness, Erik, even you have to admit that."

Erik shook his head slightly. "Irrelevant. Some Germans were capable of great goodness, too."

"You were one of them."

"I was never one of them." Erik stood now, angry. Charles refused to give him the satisfaction of craning his neck to gaze up. "I have always been different. And so have you. Why are you wasting your time trying to save humanity?"

"Because to do otherwise would be to declare ourselves superhuman, and I choose to leave those classifications to Mengele." In this dream, Charles found, he could lash back with all the precise fury he had never been able to muster when confronted with Erik in waking. "We are not superior to them, Erik, we are merely different, and I refuse to be a party to a system of classification that regards humans as lesser beings!"

Charles realized he was shouting. He stopped.

For an indeterminate period of time neither man spoke, nor moved. The sun slanting through the windows reddened, then set.

* * *

"Do you know why I hate them so much?"

Charles did not answer. Clearly Erik was going to tell him, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

"Because you believe in them, you believe so furiously, and they will always make you wrong. Because they could never see how beautiful you are."

Of all the dreams he'd had thus far, this was the one that embarrassed Charles most when he remembered it upon waking.

Even so, he returned to it several times that day, turning it over in his mind like a water-polished stone.

* * *

Erik lounged on a divan in silk pyjamas, deep blue that hinted at forest green in the shadows. The very pair he had worn over forty years ago, resized in memory to fit his current frame.

He was, Charles thought ruefully, every bit as attractive as he had been at twenty. Damn him.

"A seduction attempt? You should know better."

Disappointment was plain in Erik's features. (Oh, for heaven's sake, Charles thought. Am I so transparent?) "I thought you liked me in these."

"That was a long time ago. Besides, they remind me of Mystique." The shifting color was the same.

"Jealous?"

Charles couldn't think of a decent retort, so he didn't bother.

After a while Erik sat up, posture betraying a hint of exasperation despite his economy of movement. "She's a fine lieutenant, Charles."

As though that were an excuse. "More than a lieutenant, I'd say."

"Surely you've found someone to warm your bed in all these years."

He had, of course; but it had never been the same. Somehow he didn't want to give Erik the satisfaction of knowing that. Even an imaginary Erik. "I don't sleep with my staff."

"They'd do it, you know. One needn't be a telepath to see that."

Anger was welling in him. "Erik, this conversation is perverse."

Images rose in him, of what he and Erik had been and done to one another. As though Erik w ere answering inside his head: _no more perverse than this,_ than Erik's body splayed before him, than the sensation of shuddering into Erik's mouth. Arousal spiked through him, but it only made him angrier.

"Have you looked at this body lately?" Charles tasted his own despair.

Inexplicably, Erik closed his eyes. He looked older and more vulnerable with his eyes shut.

When he spoke, it was so quietly that Charles almost didn't hear. "Often."

* * *

Their conversations stayed with him. Often they replayed in his mind amidst his waking responsibilities: over breakfast and the newspaper, between meetings with Scott and Shakespeare discussions with the children.

He carefully kept them out of his mind when he had occasion to use Cerebro. Clear focus was essential. He couldn't afford to have his mind clouded by the emotional impact of remembered conversations which, in point of fact, weren't actually real.

Charles considered working his way through Freud again, and got so far as placing his old paperback edition of _The Interpretation of Dreams_ on his bedside table, but never actually opened it beyond the title page.

Besides, really, what was there to analyze? Of course his mind was full, of course Erik—his onetime lover and best friend; now his betrayor, his nemesis—figured prominently there.

It was, perhaps, an unorthodox way to work through one's issues, but there was nothing wrong with it.

Besides. If he were truly honest with himself...he would admit that he was reluctant to give up the nearly nightly illusion of Erik's company.

Pathetic, really, but surely it was harmless. He had few enough sources of pleasure as it was.

* * *

"What's your fancy this evening?"

"I want to walk." The words were out of his mouth before he could consider retracting them.

Just like that, his legs were whole again. He could feel them, sinew and muscle and bone, as though the paralysis had never happened.

Effortlessly he stood, walked to the window, looked out over the school grounds. Standing again was almost dizzying. Ecstatic.

Erik stood beside him, hands clasped behind his back. His smile was genuine. "Good, isn't it?"

In the next breath Charles was lanced with sadness. "I wish someone were here to see me."

Erik reached out and cupped his face in a palm. His hand was softer, more wrinkled than it had once been, but the touch still sent fire tingling through him.

This is my dream; I can kiss him, Charles thought again, as he thought every time Erik manifested. This time the thought prickled at his skin, insistent. He was going to act on it this time.

In the next instant they were pressed together, Charles' thigh prisoned between Erik's surprisingly strong legs. The kiss was better than he remembered: more intense, sweeter than it had once been, honeyed with the decades of longing between them.

When they broke apart Erik's face was flushed, his breathing coming harder. Charles would have felt smug about that, had his own heartrate not been spiraling through the roof.

"I'm here," Erik offered.

As though it mattered. "You're not," Charles countered. A frown began to crease Erik's features, and Charles wondered why they couldn't resist arguing even in fantasy, but the words seemed to come of their own accord. "This is all good and well, but when I wake up you'll be gone. I...I'm tired of waking alone." He hadn't meant to confess that, but what did it matter? It was a dream, was it not? "I don't want to wake up alone."

"You don't think this is real." Erik sounded almost amused.

"Of course not. That's patently—"

* * *

The shrill ringing of his bedside phone woke him. Charles squinted at the digital clock: three-thirty in the morning. Who on earth would be calling at this hour?

His legs were heavy, a deep disappointment after the freedom he'd been dreaming. He wished he'd taken advantage of the imaginary legs while he'd had them; he rarely dreamed them whole anymore.

His heart, oddly, was still pounding. Because of the late-night phone call, no doubt.

On the sixth ring it stopped.

Charles lay still and listened to his heart. Gradually it slowed.

Go back to sleep, he told himself.

And then the phone rang again. Insistent.

It couldn't be who he was expecting. It didn't matter who he was expecting.

Schooling his hand not to tremble, he lifted the receiver. "Hello?"

"My apologies for waking you." Distant through the wires of the phone, but unmistakeably Erik's voice.

Had there been hair on his head, surely the blaze that overtook his body and psyche would have stood it on end. "Erik." Charles took an instant to marshal his thoughts in some kind of order. How was this possible? What was going on? Was this some kind of weird coincidence? Should he call for help? Finally, he settled on, "What are we doing?"

"I'd have thought that would be obvious." He could hear the smile in his erstwhile partner's voice. He closed his eyes, the better to imagine Erik's aspect, his features. "We're courting."

The pleasure that notion provided was irritating; he did not want to be enmeshed in this. And yet apparently he was. "To what end?"

"Must there always be an end?" Erik's tone was light, but the words seemed laced with double meaning.

Charles took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

Erik waited.

"Perhaps not."

Erik chuckled, a rich low sound that made Charles smile despite himself. "Good."

There was a long pause. Charles could almost imagine that they were ordinary lovers, separated by business or travel, quietly lying together on opposite ends of the fiberoptic cable.

His mind was whirring. Erik had spoken as though Charles had been coming to see him; if he were sleeping without the helmet...if some combination of power and longing had resulted in a heretofore unknown manifestation of his telepathy...if they'd actually been together in lucid dreams, as it appeared (against all reason) that they had...

The implications were staggering. Perhaps he would be able to focus on them in the morning, once the giddiness had worn off. For now, Charles twisted the edge of his coverlet in one hand, and held the phone with the other, and listened to their companionable silence.

Eventually Erik spoke again. "It's late where you are." Refusing to identify his position; of course. Predictable.

Charles stifled a yawn. "Indeed."

"I won't keep you."

"If you're waiting for me to protest, you'll be waiting a while. I won't play those games."

Charles was silently congratulating himself for, in fact, playing the game rather well.

Erik's sign-off broke through his defenses, sharp as ever.

"Good night, Charles." His sardonic smile was audible, which was strangely pleasing. "Sweet dreams."


End file.
